December 10-13, 2024 Firearms & Militaria
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 12/10/2024
Unknown 18th c. American or British Artist. "Lieutenant Colonel and Mrs. Donald McDonald, 1786." (paired portraits). Pastel on paper, each 18 ¼ x 14 ¾ in. (oval), within gilt, carved and molded frames; inscribed in iron gall ink on laid paper labels on verso, respectively: “Colonel Donald Macdonald late of the Highland Emigrants done in 1786, in the 78th year of his age.” and “Mrs. Colonel Donald MacDonald nee Jane Aitkin done in 1786, in the 60th year of her age.” Born in 1708 or 1709, Donald McDonald (or “Macdonald”, although he signed his name “McDonald) became a lieutenant in Loudon's Highlanders, on 8 June 1745 and served with it during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745-46 and later in the Flanders campaign of 1747. When Loudon's Highlanders disbanded in 1748, McDonald went on half pay and reentered active serve in the Corps of Marines on 10 February 1755. Promoted to captain on 12 December 1755, he served with the Marines through the entire Seven Years War. With the coming of peace, Captain McDonald (like many other Scottish soldiers) decided to settle in the American colonies. With the outbreak of civil war in America, he was appointed major of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Highland Emigrants, a Provincial or Loyalist corps authorized by General Thomas Gage on 12 June 1775, his commission bearing the same date. McDonald was sent from Boston to North Carolina to drum up recruits for the regiment from the numerous Highland settlers that had remained loyal to the Crown and thus, did not participate with his battalion in the successful defense of Quebec against Montgomery’s patriot army that winter. Meanwhile Josiah Martin, royal governor of North Carolina, had received Crown approval to suppress the rebellion in his colony. When McDonald arrived in early July, Martin appointed him commander of all Loyalist forces in North Carolina with the local rank of brigadier general. McDonald recruited an army of 1400 men (600 Highlanders and 800 other Loyalists and Regulators) during the early weeks of 1776. This activity caused rebel or Patriot authorities to mobilize an army of roughly 1,900 Continentals and militia to oppose them. By the time the armies fought at the battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, desertions had reduced Loyalist numbers to 700 or 800 men, 600 of them McDonald's trusty Highlanders. Prior to the battle, illness had incapacitated General McDonald and command during the battle fell to Lieutenant Colonel Donald McLeod. The Patriots captured McDonald and many of his men soon after the battle and he was eventually exchanged in December 1776, still gravely ill. Because General Howe had not authorized his promotion to brigadier, he reverted to the rank of major in the Royal Highland Emigrants. Recuperating from his illness, MacDonald remained in New York rather than joining the 1st Battalion in Canada and was named a brevet lieutenant colonel on August 29, 1777. He retired from the army on October 22, 1779. The old warrior sat for his 1786 portrait in a uniform that could be that of a brigadier general, in that it has a short standing collar with blue tabs and blue lapels with buttonholes set singly, which was appropriate for that rank. However, the holes are made of gold lace, rather than embroidered per regulation and the epaulettes are the Royal Highland Emigrant's regimental pattern, with gold embroidery upon a blue ground that includes the ubiquitous thistle device of Highland regiments, so MacDonald could also be depicted wearing an officer's frock coat of the Royal Highland Emigrants (which had a standing collar, versus the fall-down collar worn on the regimental coat), that regiment also having blue facings to their uniforms.